Category: News

With the Series 11 of Doctor Who confirmed to air “by October”, the BBC has finally announced the full list of writers and directors that will be contributing to the series. And although none of the DWCA’s own candidates were selected, overall we’re pretty excited about what’s to come!

Writers

Former Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman has written over 60 books for children and young adults including the Noughts and Crosses series of novels and her book Pig-Heart Boy, which was adapted into a six-part TV series. She also wrote the Puffin eshort The Ripple Effect, a Seventh Doctor short story to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, which was republished in the 11 Doctors, 11 Stories collection, and its sequel 12 Doctors, 12 Stories.

Playwright and screenwriter Vinay Patel’s television debut, Murdered By My Father, won the 2016 Royal Television Society Award for Best Single Drama and was nominated for three BAFTAs. He has also written an episode of The Good Karma Hospital, which featured new companion actor Mandip Gill for two episodes.

Pete McTighe has written over a hundred hours of TV drama, including long-running Australian soap opera Neighbours, and been nominated for five Writers Guild Awards. He is also the originating writer of Wentworth, the female prison drama that has sold to over 150 countries.

Joy Wilkinson has been selected as a Screen International Star of Tomorrow and has had two screenplays featured on the Brit List. Her TV scripts include the critically acclaimed BBC five-parter The Life and Adventures of Nick Nickleby, while her theatre work has won prizes including the Verity Bargate Award.

Ed Hime was nominated for a Craft BAFTA for his first episode of Skins, and won the Prix Italia for his radio play The Incomplete Recorded Works of a Dead Body.

They are of course joined by showrunner and head writer Chris Chibnall.

Directors

Jamie Childs, who directed Jodie Whittaker’s reveal as the new Doctor, returns for the opening episode of the new series. He is currently directing two episodes of His Dark Materials, a miniseries based on Philip Pullman’s trilogy of fantasy novels.

Australian director Jennifer Perrott wrote, directed, produced and executive produced 35mm short film The Ravens, and has directed programmes including Offspring and Home and Away. Since finishing Doctor Who she has been directing Gentleman Jack, a forthcoming BBC One/HBO historical drama series created by Sally Wainwright.

Mark Tonderai has been making quite a name for himself, having directed Jennifer Lawrence thriller House at the End of the Street. He also directed all 10 episodes of miniseries The Five, as well as various episodes of Impulse, Lucifer, Gotham, Black Lightning, 12 Monkeys, George RR Martin’s Nightflyers and more.

The team is capped off by Sallie Aprahamian, who has been directing television for over two decades with critically acclaimed shows including Extremely Dangerous, The Sins, Real Men, The Lakes, Teachers and This Life.

“We have a team of writers who’ve been working quietly and secretly for a long time now, crafting characters, worlds and stories to excite and move you. A set of directors who stood those scripts up on their feet, bringing those ideas, visuals and emotions into existence with bravura and fun,” said Chibnall.

“Hailing from a range of backgrounds, tastes and styles, here’s what unites them: they are awesome people as well as brilliant at their job. (It matters!) They love Doctor Who. And they’ve all worked above and beyond the call of duty in an effort to bring audiences something special, later this year.”

Although an exact airdate for Doctor Who’s eleventh series is yet to be announced, the BBC has confirmed in the latest issue of Radio Times that it will air “by October”. That means a start date sometime in September or October, which could result in the ten-episode series ending close to Christmas Day – just in time for a 2018 Christmas special.

Speculation has been rife for months as to whether the annual tradition will continue under new showrunner Chris Chibnall, with its existence first hinted at when the online CV of editor Edel McDonnell listed this year’s special as one of his most recent jobs. The CV also listed Wayne Yip as director of the special, whose previous work includes Series 10 episodes The Lie of the Land and Empress of Mars as well as two episodes of spin-off series Class.

The news was more or less confirmed by Chibnall at San Diego Comic-Con, when he teased, “We seem to be filming 11 episodes, and it’s only a series of 10.” And with Yip not listed as one of the directors working on the upcoming series, this would seem to indicate that the Christmas episode would count as its own special event.

Sharmill Films has meanwhile revealed that the first episode of Series 11 will be premiering in Australian cinemas, as was the debut episode of Series 10, The Pilot. The company has released its version of the official Series 11 trailer in the lead-up to the screening, promising more details soon!

Overnight, the BBC have confirmed that Series 11 will be scored by Segun Akinola. He will also be responsible for making a new version of the iconic Doctor Who theme tune.

Segun Akinola, trained at The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, will take over from Murray Gold. As part of the BAFTA Breakthrough Brit program in 2017, Segun has already been recognised as one of the rising stars among British composers.

Segun’s other work includes scoring BBC Two’s landmark four-part series Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by Historian David Olusoga. He also scored Shola Amoo’s debut feature film A Moving Image, which had its world premiere at the 2016 LA Film Festival. His score for Dear Mr Shakespeare received an Honourable Mention for the 2017 BSO Jerry Goldsmith Award for ‘Best Original Score for a Short Film’. Recently, he completed the scores for the major three-part series The Human Body: Secrets of Your Life Revealed and two-part series Expedition Volcano, both for BBC Two and PBS.

SEVEN weeks, seven doctors and a whole lot of Daleks -social video service Twitch is set to launch a Special Viewing Event for Doctor Who fans.

Twitch announced they are joining forces with BBC Studios for the first-ever digital broadcast event featuring the Classic Doctor Who series.

So that’s more than 500 episodes from the 26 series airing worldwide during the seven-week period. Starting 29 May (or in Australia’s case 4am 30 May) tune in each week Monday to Friday at 11 am PDT to catch episodes onTwitch.tv/TwitchPresents.

BBC Studios Director of Digital Sales and Business Development, Nick Coulter was excited about the partnership.

“We are constantly looking at ways to reach new audiences and make it easier for fans to engage with our most popular shows,” he said.

“Doctor Who, in particular, has a great tradition of pioneering new technologies, from early VHS all the way through to the new digital services of today. Twitch is another great example of this, as a brilliant service with over 15 million active daily users, we are thrilled to be able to offer them the chance to indulge in the Classic Doctor Who series and celebrate its amazing 54 year legacy of excitement and innovation.”

As part of the event, leading UK digital content creators The Yogscast are producing a series of shows that will introduce each Doctor. With a cast of Doctor Who screenwriters, experts, fans, and even a former companion, the Yogscast’s Turps and resident Doctor Who expert and High Roller’s player Matt Toffollo will discuss why modern audiences should watch Doctor Who. Each 20-minute episode will provide a brief summary of the stories, including the actors, monsters, famous phrases or production gaffes to look out for. With first-hand knowledge from former companion Katy Manning and writers Bob Baker and Paul Cornell, the shows will give insight into the series alongside the humour and irreverence viewers expect from the Yogscast.

“Doctor Who and its clever take on sci-fi exemplifies the type of adjacent content to gaming that has resonated with the Twitch community,” Jane Weedon, Twitch Director of Business Development said.

“By presenting this iconic BBC show in a new interactive format, it is a fun new way to bridge several generations of Doctor Who fans, while building a new generation of them.”

For more information on the Doctor Who episodes that will air on Twitch, visit the Twitch blog.

And if you want to own the Classic Who episodes and watch them any time you like (with extras and without ads) don’t forget to head to the DVD section of the DWCA Shop where you can purchase the eps – http://dwca.org.au/products-page/dvds/

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if River Song met the Master? Well wonder no longer, because thanks to the magic of audio drama, River will soon be locking horns with not one, not two, but four incarnations of the Doctor’s oldest foe!

The Diary of River Song, Big Finish Productions’ spin-off series starring Alex Kingston, has seen River Song encounter the Eighth, Seventh, Sixth and Fifth Doctors – with the Fourth to follow later this year. Now our heroine is set to face her toughest challenge yet, meeting four Masters over the course of four hour-long adventures.

Yes, TV Movie Master Eric Roberts will be returning to the role for the first time in 22 years, while Michelle Gomez’s Missy will become the first Twelfth Doctor era character to join the Big Finish family. They will be accompanied by Geoffrey Beevers’ decayed Master and Derek Jacobi’s War Master, the latter having recently starred in both his own series for Big Finish as well as the much-anticipated Gallifrey: Time War.

“This is something we’ve been so incredibly excited about for so long,” said Nicholas Briggs, executive producer at Big Finish. “It’s been thrilling enough for us to work with Alex for all the River releases, but to put her against the Doctor’s former best friend turned arch enemy is not a little mind-blowing. Fantastic that we’re getting an opportunity to work with Michelle again, after her first appearance (at Big Finish) with Sylvester McCoy back in 2007! But somehow strangely incredible that Eric Roberts is back from the 1996 TV movie. It’s frankly ‘clash of the icons’ in a really mind-blowing box set.”

The fifth series of The Diary of River Song will be available from the DWCA Shop in early 2019. The fourth series, featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, will be out in late 2018. The third series, with Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Frances Barber as Madame Kovarian, is available now.

After many months of rumours, Murray Gold confirmed at the Gallifrey One convention over the weekend that he won’t be returning for Series 11 of Doctor Who.

Gold has composed music for every episode of the show since it returned in 2005. The strength and quality of his music was showcased in the popular Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, which visited Australia in 2012, 2014 and 2015.

There is no announcement of who Gold’s replacement will be as yet. However, Broadchurch composer Ólafur Arnalds has ruled himself out.

In addition to this, it has also been confirmed that Moffat era writers Jamie Mathieson and Sarah Dollard won’t be returning to write for Series 11.

We’ll update this page once we know who the official replacement for Gold is.